Here's a TED Talk that should be of interest to all curious Maldivians. Charles Anderson, a British marine biologist working and living in the Maldives for 26 years, reports on how him noticing the sudden emergence of dragonflies in the Maldives at certain times of the year led him to discover the world's longest migratory journey taken by any insect. It is a truly riveting story of curiosity and scientific discovery.

I now have an answer to a question I used to wonder about when I was a kid: Where do the dragonflies came from?

Ironic isn't it? Just a little over a week ago, the President of Maldives Mohamed Nasheed announced his intentions of making Maldives a sanctuary for dissenting writers from countries such as Burma. Now, a week later, Haveeru News reports that the Telecommunications Authority of Maldives has blocked 5 sites under orders from the Ministry of Islamic Affairs (MoIA).

Officially blocked

Here are the sites declared not-fit-for-public-consumption along with their approximate blocked date:
1. seedhaahithun.com (29 Nov 2008, details)
2. sidahitun.com (29 Nov 2008, details)
3. gospelgo.com (29 Nov 2008, details)
4. raajjeislam.com (13 Mar 2009, details)
5. randomreflexions.com (15 Mar 2009, details)
6. feydhooschool.info (15 Mar 2009, details)

Seedhaahithun.com, sidahitun.com and gospelgo.com were apparently blocked for "promoting Christianity". The reason for blocking RaajjeIslam a few days ago is unknown and according to the media, the MoIA has not offered an explanation. As has been noted by Minivan News and Haveeru News, the website was blocked after they published an audio clip of Mohamed Shakeeb, an Imam at Shaviyani Atoll Foakaidhoo, claiming that he has been threatened by the State Minister of Islamic Affairs Mohamed Shaheem Ali Saeed. It is interesting to note that the material on the website seems to be ideologically similar to that advocated by the Adhaalath Party, who controls the MoIA, and tame compared to what can be seen at, say, fagudi.wordpress.com. There is no specific explanation given for randomreflexions.com. The feydhooschool.info site was apparently blocked upon request from a "senior person" at the Feydhoo School. I seriously doubt the MoIA has the authorization to block any website under such flimsy pretense.

Mass censorship??

You might have noticed that I used "mass internet censorship" in the title of this post and here is why.

As you may already know, every human readable pretty domain name maps to an address called IP address. That is how computers find each other on a network and on the Internet. For example, the domain name for Dhiraagu is dhiraagu.com.mv and their associated IP address is 202.1.207.33. So when you type in dhiraagu.com.mv, your computer looks up the IP address and tries to access the server computer at that IP address. But an IP address can be shared by many different domains on a single server and this is the standard practice amongst all web hosting services. The Dhiraagu IP address, for example, is shared by around 81 other sites including Bank of Maldives and Bandos Resort. If someone wanted to block, say, Bank of Maldives and placed a block on the IP address 202.1.207.33, then all the other 81 domain names would also be affected and their sites made inaccessible. Please note there doesn't necessarily have to be any relationship or connection between the sites that maybe hosted on a single IP.

Now consider the above mentioned blocked sites, their IP addresses and the number of sites it carries.

- 98.130.196.2 (raajjeislam.com) --> 181
- 67.205.44.193 (simonshareef.com) --> 98
- 66.197.160.197 (feydhooschool.info) --> 589
- 64.71.35.15 (gospelgo.com) --> 9
- 58.137.156.52 (seedhaahithun.com, sidahitun.com) --> 32

That means there would be a total 909 unintended victim sites that fell prey to the mindless blocking of just these few site IP addresses! This has been confirmed been both on Dhiraagu and ROL connections.

While running censorship checks, using lists of Maldivian blogs and websites, a few other websites got flagged as possible victims of MoIA instructed blocking or indirect victims of such blocking.
- souley.org (ROL only)
- gasim08.com (ROL only)
- maumoon2008.net (ROL only)
- mvphotos.org
- simonshareef.com

Souley.org, gasim08.com and maumoon2008.net are all hosted at the popular GoDaddy hosting service and happen to be all on the same server. The server is also host to 5553 other domains hence all those 5553 are under functional censorship as well. It is not clear whether this really is due to censorship of one these three websites (or possibly another I am not aware of) or due to a technical glitch. Given that these sites are accessible under Dhiraagu, it may well be due to a glitch at ROL but I thought it maybe worth mentioning here. (Update: 17/Mar/2009) I've been informed that ROL was indeed instructed to block that IP as well, meaning well over 6000 sites are currently effectively censored! MvPhotos.org and simonshareef.com are hosted on the same server as randomreflexions.com and hence is blocked as well (or possibly has been blocked under instruction from MoIA).

I cannot stress enough the irresponsibility that goes with imposing such unrestricted IP based blocks. I suspect the blame for this mishap rests solely on TAM and the two ISPs.

Future

The Maldivian blogosphere contains dozens of blogs from various individuals, Muslim and other belief positions alike, that do not subscribe to MoIA's views and are pretty vocal in letting their opposition and dissenting views be known. But by no means is dissent limited to personal websites only. The popular video sharing website Youtube contains many videos that promote Christianity in Dhivehi. There is also growing demand for the many thousands of articles, books, videos and lectures on the various theistic and nontheistic positions that are available online for easy reading for the English literate. One thing is clear for the future: Maldives is no longer a mostly homogeneous society where people think and believe the same thing, despite the continuing assertions by the government and the MoIA. Will MoIA continue to block websites, including those such as YouTube?

Breaking free

The Internet is a beast that is hard to tame and a blocked website is just a minor inconvenience at best.
RSS - All blocked blogs and websites with RSS feeds can be accessed using some of the many free web-based RSS readers.
Proxy - Using a proxy might be convenient and might be the best option if the site you are trying to access does not provide full RSS feeds. There are two ways to this: using a web-based proxy service or setting a proxy in your browser.
Tor - Tor is a freely downloadable software that uses a method called "onion routing" to bounce your traffic several times with different hosts on the internet before going to the final destination.

Opinions

Perhaps it is too soon to raise alarm over the MoIA's tightening grip on the internet, perhaps it will be reversed soon. Either way, it is not too early to call for the establishment of clear guidelines and mechanisms for blocking websites, if the government really insists on continuing to stifle opinion. Letting anyone reign per their whims on the sole source of decent information available in the Maldives, to arbitrarily block websites and blackout large sections of the internet, does not seem very conducive towards the new government's promise of a free and democratic society.

Elsewhere on the Maldivian blogs...
- maldives: Maldives to become haven for dissident writers but plagued by censorship
- maldivesdissent: Maldives president blocks websites and crackowns on protests
- ithadu: How sensible is the Islamic Ministry?
- ithadu: From internet to intranet! Democracy?
- duwyduwy: Attack on bloggers
- chopey: Dr. Majeed, Please bless my blog
- majlissexstories - Internet banned
- Bits 'N' Bytes: I condemn internet censorship by Islamic Ministry in Maldives
- MaldivesHealth: In support of RandomReflections
- pizzahouse: A moment of silence...

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Note: Big thanks to Hassan for all the help he provided in running the block checks on ROL and contributing to the mini-investigation. Also thanks to Nattu and Rhipha for the list of Maldivian websites and Millzero for confirming the blocks on Dhiraagu.

Anthropologist Clarence Maloney's monograph "People of the Maldive Islands" is a heavily cited and recommended source when it comes to the topic of early Maldivian history. Sadly, the book was originally published in 1980 and has long been out of print. I had tried getting hold of it several years ago without success and I've still yet to locate a copy. Anyway, I got reminded of the book last night after stumbling across an article from the same author that I had read back then. The article addresses a very important question that all Maldivians should ask: "Where Did the Maldives People Come From?". Have a read, it really is a fascinating few minutes of reading...

"What was not known previous to my research in the early 1970s, is that there is a strong underlying layer of Tamil population and culture. So far, most Divehis have not shown themselves interested in accepting this finding, as it does not suit their sense of their prestigious origins." - Clarence Maloney

I got news today from Ajmal that the Maldives Science Society had finally received permission from Druyan-Sagan Associates to go ahead with its planned screening of Carl Sagan's award-winning science documentary series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. MSS has been, far as I know, planning this event for well over a month now and was to be their very first event before the lecture on astronomy event slotted in. I think it is admirable that they went about obtaining permission before screening it, especially since it's all too common a practice in Maldives to hold no regard whatsoever for intellectual property rights.

Cosmos is truly a brilliant series; a bit aged (first broadcast in 1980!) yet still very relevant and informative. It tells the story of the universe and us humans through a wide range of scientific topics. It's content is not at all technical and is extremely accessible to everyone, which, I think, makes it a very suitable choice to jump-start conversations in the science-cafe'ish type of informal event MSS is after. MSS is only screening episode 1 out of the 13 episodes that make up Cosmos. The event is scheduled for 8:30pm, 12th Feb at Bankai Coffee Shop (see the MSS announcement).

Carl Sagan was and still is perhaps one of the best science popularizers the world has seen. The famous "Pale Blue Dot" image of Earth snapped by NASA, at the suggestion of Dr. Sagan, using the Voyager 1 spacecraft when it was a mind-boggling 6.4 billion kilometers away from Earth is one of the most moving and humbling things I have ever seen. It really does give a sense of our place in the universe, as a planet, as a species and as a person. At that distance, so far away from Earth, the Earth is seen as nothing more than a mere insignificant speck of dust, occupying less than 0.12 pixels, set against the darkness of the rest of the universe. The fact that a man-made object made it that far, snapped a picture and sent it back to its home (taking on a journey almost 6 hours travelling at the speed of light!) makes me shudder with excitement. Even more exciting is the fact that the Voyager 1 spacecraft is still operating, currently located around twice the distance Pluto is from the Sun, and ready to exit our solar system into the interstellar space! I can't imagine a more fitting choice of words than Sagan's to describe the picture...

Here is a quick mashup I cooked up today, displaying the geographic distribution of political party membership on the map of Male' on Google Maps. To view the distribution for a party, open the link for the visualization, select the name of the political party from the drop-down menu at the top right. The addresses of members of that party will then be flagged with a little red marker. You will be able to zoom in-out, pan and do all those other things typically seen in Google Maps. Click a red marker to see more details about that address, like the number of people belonging to the selected party that are registered under that address.

The party membership information used for this is a snapshot of the data (taken 7 February 2009) published on the Members of Political Parties web portal by the Elections Commission. There were a total of 4,447 people belonging to 2,711 addresses in Male' listed in the Elections Commission data. Each party had membership numbers (given in brackets) in Male' as follows: Adhaalathu Party (175), Dhivehi Qaumee Party (261), Dhivehi Rahjeyn Fageerukan Nahthaalumah Masahkaikuraa Party (650), Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party (243), Gaumee Ih'thihaadh (592), Islamic Democratic Party (89), Jumhooree Party (246), Maldivian Democratic Party (507), Maldivian National Congress (386), Maldivian Social Democratic Party (25), Peoples Party (476), Peoples' Alliance (422) and Social Liberal Party (375). The maximum number of persons listed on a single address for a party was 12 and the average was 1 person per address (per party).

The geo-location information for the addresses was derived from the excellent services at Male-map.com and EAtolls.com. A total of 1,928 addresses were successfully mapped using these services, leaving a difference of 783 addresses which were then discarded. It is worth noting that of these addresses left out, 478 were just Dhaftharu numbers.

Please note that I neither claim nor guarantee the correctness or the completeness of any of the information used. That said, I did my best to ensure data integrity throughout the whole process of generating the visualizations.

- Click here to view the visualization

As you may already know, this year is being celebrated worldwide as the International Year of Astronomy. The effort, an initiative of the International Astronomical Union and UNESCO, intends "to help the citizens of the world rediscover their place in the Universe through the day- and night-time sky, and thereby engage a personal sense of wonder and discovery". And now, thanks to the hard work from the newly formed Maldives Science Society (MSS), Maldives will be joining in too.

MSS has organised for Dr. Kavan U. Ratnatunga, a Sri Lankan astronomer and Senior Research Scientist at Carnegie Mellon University (US), to travel to the Maldives and deliver a presentation. His presentation titled "The Universe as viewed through the Hubble Space Telescope" will center around the Hubble Space Telescope. It is a topic he is very much qualified to lecture - he has worked at NASA and has authored numerous research papers on various analyses and investigations of Hubble's snapshots of the universe.

The presentation is scheduled for 8:30pm - 11:00pm, 11th of February at the MCSE Seminar Room, Male'. If you are in Male' and interested in science and astronomy then it probably will be worth your while to attend the presentation. More details of the event are on the MSS Facebook event page and I presume updates will appear on the MSS website as well.

I commend the guys at MSS for putting so much of their time and their own money into making this event a reality. I hope they can make arrangements to participate in atleast some of the IYA cornerstone projects. The IYA Galileoscope project, which has developed a high-quality low-cost telescope kit, holds a lot of promise for MSS to make it possible for the public, especially kids and teens, to truly experience the universe through the lens of a real telescope. I, for one, had tears well up in my eye the first time I saw the rings of Saturn up close on a telescope... how will you react?

Thanks to the recent arrangements to have a polling station here in the UK, I too now have the opportunity to have my say in the Maldivian Presidential Elections - for the very first time in my life. And for me, deciding on who to vote for in this round is a very very trivial matter - I am voting for change.

As a matter of fact, I've known I would not vote for Gayyoom ever since the two years I spent working at the President's Office (PO) six years ago. Being fresh out of school, much of the environment at PO - the cult-like demands for "loyalty" and regular "office meetings" where employees are made to sing songs praising the man (with lyrics written specifically for the occasion) - came on as a total shocker to me. By the time I left PO, having witnessed the various practices and policies enforced and encouraged, I was totally disillusioned by Gayyoom and Maldivian politics.

I am voting for change because I want to see an end to the growing national debt, care-free spending and wasteful expenditures and because I can't bear to see the growing disparity between the rich and the poor, the elite and the unprivileged and Male' and the atolls. I am voting for change because I've had it with the gangs, the drugs and the violence and because I want everyone to be able to live in peace with the rule of law upheld. I am voting for change because I believe in democratic values and because I support a free press. I am voting for change because I question the sincerity and the competence of Gayyoom to do these things and because 30 years of rule is 20 years longer than I can accept.

I am voting for change because I staunchly champion the celebration of diversity - of people and their thought - which I believe this country desperately needs and which I believe the Watah Edhey Gothah coalition represents. There, ofcourse, is no guarantee that this "change" will be any better but I'd rather give them the benefit of the doubt...